AI doesn’t think for you. It types for you.

How AI can negatively impact ideation and creation

There is a term called ‘The Matthew Effect,’ which states that the more you read, the easier it becomes to grasp concepts in a domain at a faster pace than someone who has not read about it before.

But this requires you to put in the effort of reading.

The same concept applies to writing: the more you go through the effort of writing, the easier it becomes the next time you sit down to write on a similar topic.

AI will give an advantage to those who are willing to learn and put in the work, meaning that writers who have already invested effort in ideation can use AI to complement their work, making it even better.

For those who have never gone through the process of ideating and writing, AI will result in templated writing.

In this process, such writers may also become lazy in ideation, leading to brain atrophy while AI becomes smarter, reducing the need to engage their own brain cells and resulting in a less sharp understanding of the topic for the person who is writing.

“AI doesn’t think for you; it types for you.”

— Sahil Lavangia

I believe this process of brain atrophy has already begun in schools, based on my discussions with a few parents of school-going children, my readings, and a couple of podcasts I have listened to.

The learning process, which was already somewhat scarce, is becoming even more negligible as students find ways to shortcut homework and assignments that require critical thinking.

As someone who tried to cut corners during my school days, I would undoubtedly be a victim of this phenomenon today.

It’s hard to explain this concept to children as they primarily aim to complete the assignment; however, they miss out on the learning process as a consequence, which is what actually shapes their thinking over the long term.

Teachers in overseas schools are being replaced by AI as costs decrease due to this AI effect, which thereby affects teacher incentives to enter the profession, and lower costs will result in more mediocre and lethargic teaching.

Now coming to the topic of AI and creativity, I documented my own perspective as well as perspectives from some thought leaders and creators.

Naval says:

“Creativity by its nature is unbounded.

Any thought can lead to any other thought; you can jump through the entire search space of possibilities in your mind.”

So saying, “I’m going to have an AI that is somehow brilliant and independent” is quite ironic.

Javed Akhtar, a famous writer, and lyricist, echoes something similar, stating that AI learns from the data we feed it, but to create something new, it must be an original idea—and in that lies your true voice, the connection of various thoughts and ideas into a unique formation.

In an interesting interview on The Barbershop, Tanmay Bhatt, at minute 44:00, mentions how the flurry of templated AI content will automatically create a market for authentic creators who aren’t relying on templates.

It’s the simple concept of supply and demand: the world is slowly being starved of genuine, authentic ideas. In fact, when I open my X (Twitter), most of the threads I read today are completely automated, and it is very obvious.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt expresses his views on the argument by discussing the distinction between content and art, emphasizing that there is a big difference between the two.

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He says that content is being churned out at a rapid pace, purely for the purpose of "making money" or "gaining engagement"

This is understandable if the creator has left her/his job to make content for a living, but it still doesn’t change the fact that it may not be the best art.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use AI to leverage your work. AI should be the enabler, not the one that dictates what you create; otherwise, you’ll be forced to produce templated content.

I use AI and understand its relevance, so I speak from experience with and without it.

For now, AI writing has become more relevant for business templates, formal writing for summarizing concepts or meeting notes, creating script templates for videos or films, or other formal topics related to business.

I’m more than happy to be proven wrong, but I don’t think AI can replace human writing when it comes to books, novels, and personal documentation.

These things come from personal, lived experiences.

Writing from these experiences further sharpens your own thinking too.

Maybe if an AI chip can one day be inserted into your body or some other such innovation occurs, it will be a different topic and I am no one to comment on whether that will happen or not.

The reader wants to go on a journey with you, and you can’t achieve that with templated writing. Currently, AI collaborates on consensus ideas, but your unique ideas will always stand out.

Human inadequacies and flaws in writing are becoming more accepted in a template-driven world, and this is a great thing.

Hear it from Sam Altman himself—I urge everyone to check out the full episode.

Humans raise the ceiling, AI raises the floor

-Sahil Lavangia

Gen AI is a powerful technology; it is getting smarter by understanding your actions, subsequently making you lazier.

However, as I mentioned before, if Gen AI is handling all the ideation, then when the time comes for you to explain those concepts or present your thesis, you may have no idea what to say since Gen AI has essentially done all the work for you.

Samarth Bansal has written a brilliant piece on AI and writing, where he mentions that "the process of writing is like building muscle. You have to hit the gym and lift weights. And as any good fitness coach will tell you: consistency matters more than perfection. You need to show up and do your thing. Stop for a while, and you lose your gains."

He adds that, just like steroids can boost muscle growth for faster results, they are essentially shortcuts. In the same way, he suggests that large language models (LLMs) act as a kind of "steroid for writing." Used skillfully, they can produce impressive sentences, but they don’t actually help one learn to write.

Not learning to write, he argues, means not learning how to think. And without the ability to think clearly and deeply, one's writing will lack substance. Extracting meaning and thinking are hard tasks.

"So again: do the hard things yourself," he concludes.

My view on the above paragraphs is that you can leverage AI more effectively when you have spent some time understanding topics and practicing to hone the art.

He rightly says it takes years to build a writing voice. That’s where you discover your true authenticity, and in a world where so much content will be produced by machines, the writer's unique voice will matter even more.

I wrote about this in the earlier part of the piece on Tanmay Bhatt’s views of a parallel market being formed.

In the piece, Samarth also mentions a couple of bullet points on how AI aids his writing. I am documenting my own experience with two bullet points from his piece but with my own insights:

AI can be a good Language Tutor

I use ChatGPT to read my raw notes, and it helps me correct my grammar in small areas I might have missed completely. It also helps me avoid repetition wherever that might occur.

I’ve put myself through the task of seeing the difference between my original sentence and the AI-corrected version just to learn where I went wrong.

But many times, it rewrites sentences in a boring, templated manner, so I often use the prompt “don’t change the flow or style of the original sentence” to maintain my authentic voice.

For writing my book, this tutor really helped, as the book-writing process is extremely tedious, and with this assistance, I was able to save the editor’s time as well.

I follow the same process with various newsletters I’ve written for other publications.

AI is your personal Research Assistant

For writing my book, work-related data pieces, and certain blogs, ChatGPT has been a godsend for generating relevant research articles once I put in the correct prompts.

AI can gather all the research links and articles I need in one place, which helps me filter out which ones are relevant after reading.

But, again, I can only do this today because I spent time manually searching for these articles in the past and learning how to filter them without the help of AI.

I wanted to end this piece with what Paul Graham says in his October 2024 essay on this topic:

“AI has blown this world open. Almost all pressure to write has dissipated. You can have AI do it for you, both in school and at work. The result will be a world divided into writes and write-nots.

There will still be some people who can write. Some of us like it. But the middle ground between those who are good at writing and those who can't write at all will disappear. Instead of good writers, ok writers, and people who can't write, there will just be good writers and people who can't write.

Is that so bad? Isn't it common for skills to disappear when technology makes them obsolete? There aren't many blacksmiths left, and it doesn't seem to be a problem.

Yes, it's bad. The reason is something I mentioned earlier: writing is thinking. In fact, there's a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing.

You can't make this point better than Leslie Lamport did:

If you're thinking without writing, you only think you're thinking.”

Conclusion

Jensen Huang, one of the world’s leading voices on this subject, says that AI can do 20% of our jobs a thousand times better, or 50% of our jobs a thousand times better, but in no job can it do all of it.

Creativity and ideation are, I strongly believe, things we need to work on by ourselves.

We must embrace AI with open arms, but if we allow it to take over the entire process of learning and creating, then it defeats the purpose.

Of course, as the famous saying goes:

"If there is an option between Natural Stupidity and Artificial Intelligence, you would rather choose the latter."

Relevant Reads from my blog:

A letter on the importance of writing to my 20-year-old self

An essay by Paul Graham that deeply resonted with me